SPACE HEAVY
KING KRULE
INTERVIEW BY CYRUS GOBERVILLE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MARK KEAN
OUT NOW
ISSUE 43 FW23
KALEIDOSCOPE's Fall/Winter 2023 issue launches with a set of six covers. Featuring Sampha, Alex Katz, Harmony Korine, a report into the metamorphosis of denim, a photo reportage by Dexter Navy, and a limited-edition cover by Isa Genzken.
Also featured in this issue: London-based band Bar Italia (photography by Jessica Madavo and interview by Conor McTernan), the archives of Hysteric Glamour (photography by Lorenzo Dalbosco and interview by Akio Kunisawa), Japanese underground illustrator Yoshitaka Amano (words by Alex Shulan), Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (photography by Nicolas Poillot and interview by Daria Miricola), a survey about Japan’s new hip-hop scene starring Tohji (photography by Taito Itateyama and words by Ashley Ogawa Clarke), Richard Prince’s new book “The Entertainers” (words by Brad Phillips), “New Art: London” (featuring Adam Farah-Saad, Lenard Giller, Charlie Osborne, R.I.P. Germain, and Olukemi Ljiadu photographed by Bolade Banjo and interviewed by Ben Broome).
FROM THE CURRENT ISSUE
ESCAPE TO MIAMI
The most southernly city in the US, Miami exists in the tropical recesses of the American imagination: land of celebrity, thunderstorms, Tony Montana, and Art Deco architecture. Here, we meet the latest generation of Miamians—committed radicals in the fields of art, fashion, and music, who are dreaming up new narratives for the city they call home.
NEW ART: LONDON
The art world’s compulsion to categorize by the yardstick of “hot or not” has historically been the driving force behind the market and the gallery system. Commerce is intertwined with this metric, spurred on by the insatiable appetite to find talented young things to build up. This system is uninteresting: what’s in vogue rarely reflects those operating at the cutting edge. Who are those young emerging artists making work against all odds—work that is difficult and costly to make, store, exhibit, move, and sell? These five individuals typify this path. Working across video, sound, installation, and sculpture, they march onwards, carving out their own niche—exhibiting in empty shop spaces one day and major institutions the next. For them, making is guided by urgency, and persistence is motivated by blind faith.
SARA SADIK
KALEIDOSCOPE hosted a solo exhibition by Marseille-based artist Sara Sadik (b. 1994, Bordeaux), in November 2023 at Spazio Maiocchi in Milan, with the support of Slam Jam. Inspired by videogames, anime, science fiction, and French rap, Sara Sadik’s work explores the reality and fantasies of France’s Maghrebi youth, addressing issues of adolescence, masculinity, and social mythologies. Her work across video, performance, and installation often centers on male characters, using computer-generated scenarios to transform their condition of marginalization into something optimistic and poetic.
FROM THE SHOP
FROM THE ARCHIVE
MANIFESTO
In 2023, from June 22 to June 24 during Men’s Fashion Week in Paris, KALEIDOSCOPE and GOAT presented the new edition of our annual arts and culture festival, MANIFESTO. Against the unique setting of the French Communist Party building, a modern architectural landmark designed by legendary Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer, the festival will bring together visionary creators from different areas of culture across three days of art, fashion and sound. The 2024 edition will run from June 21 to June 23.
CAPSULE PLAZA
In April 2023, a year after the launch of the magazine, Capsule introduced Capsule Plaza, a new initiative that infuses new energy into Milan Design Week by redefining the design showcase format. A hybrid between a fair and a collective exhibition, Capsule Plaza brings together designers and companies from various creative fields, bridging industry and culture with a bold curation that spans interiors and architecture, beauty and technology, ecology and craft. The 2024 edition will run from April 15 to April 21.
2023 marks ten years since Archy Marshall, at only 18, released his debut album—howling, urban and desolate, preciously young, totally timeless. We find him now, a decade older, a father, having left his native London for Liverpool, and about to release his fourth studio work under the King Krule alias—one written on commuter trains, lingering in the “space between.”
CYRUS GOBERVILLE
You and I were both born in 1994. I was at one of your first shows in 2011, in Paris, at Point Éphémère, when you were still called Zoo Kid, a few years before your first appearance as King Krule in Paris. I remember my best friend and I were both excited and jealous since you were a few months younger than us. This new album, Space Heavy, which is amazing, marks ten years of this project; is it a symbolic birthday?
KING KRULE
Well, we wrote the album last year. So, I feel the music is younger than that moment. But no, I feel fine.
CG
I listened to the new album, but had to listen to the old ones too. These songs summon up so many teenage memories that are surprisingly still potent all these years later. It felt like there is something both genuine and melancholic traversing your music—technically it’s amazing too.
KK
There was a foundation, and as I’ve been doing this more and more and more ... It evolves in all kinds of different ways, but I guess there’s always going to be something that burns through. I have a relationship with the guitar, which is something that’s become stronger and stronger throughout my whole life, even if I’m still just as bad at playing it as I was when I was young; if anything, I was better when I was younger. Well, I’ve always been terrible at playing the guitar, but that’s not what I use it for. I play it in a different way. On this record, I think there was just the guitar and my brain.
CG
Would you describe your guitar as alive?
KK
Yeah, kind of. I see guitars more like sketchbooks, like something that I can write inside. It’s lucid as well.
CG
When you were young, you used to draw while listening to your uncle play music, right?
KK
Oh, yeah. He was at the show in Paris at la Marbrerie last March. He lives in the south of France. He’s been living there all of my life.
CG
And he was in a Ska band?
KK
Ska, yeah, rocksteady. Seeing him play live was one of my earliest memories of music.
CG
And your godfather was a singer too?
KK
Yeah. He was in The Ruts. I watched my mum play bass with him; I watched my father play guitar, not live but at home.
CG
They’ve had a big influence on you?
KK
All of my family, every aspect of it—everyone has helped me become who I am now, has helped my creativity become what it is.
CG
In the notes you wrote accompanying the press release for Space Heavy, you say that you’ve only recently been using a streaming platform to listen to music. Are you still digging for new music? What else influences you?
KK
I listen to lots of different stuff. I’ve never had access to streaming music before on my phone, but I was spending a lot of time on my own and I was traveling a lot up and down England on the train, and I wanted to fill the gaps in between, so I listened to loads of stuff, but nothing really stands out as to where it influenced me. I just get bored of myself and my own shit. I guess with the streaming thing, I was able to find loads of contemporary stuff or stuff I never listened to other than maybe once in a blue moon.
CG
The song “Cheater” is a lot about these gaps and in-between situations. A form of loneliness seems to develop through the record, through these “lost in translation” travels. What do you do when you don’t make music? How do you deal with the loneliness?
KK
Well, I spend a lot of time writing and I spend a lot of time reading and drawing but mainly I spend a lot of time walking. I like to walk alone, especially in places I don’t know. I’ve been to Paris so many times, but I have no idea of the layout of the city or anything. The night before the show last March, all of my friends got a taxi home, but I walked. It was nice. I like to see the city from the ground. I’m also very privileged because I’m a white male so I can just walk around a lot of places at night on my own. I spend a lot of time late at night walking around, being in the city when it’s empty. That definitely helps me write, being able to walk around and see things.
CG
Do you remember where you walked in Paris?
KK
Oh, not far. From somewhere in the 11th arrondissement to somewhere else in the 11th arrondissement. But I got lost. I think I went the wrong way.
CG
The crowd at your show at la Marbrerie was quite interesting: there was a lot of young people, a lot of people who would’ve been my age when I saw you first play. It’s interesting that your music is not generational, that it still exists for everyone at that age. Which is very romantic in a way. How do you like playing intimate shows? You seem to have a strong relationship with your saxophonist, Ignacio.
KK
Me and Ignacio had a really strong relationship from almost the first second that we kind of laid eyes on each other. Basically on this record, me, him, and George, the drummer, spent a lot of time together. At the start, it was mainly me and Ignacio recording together in Liverpool; George came a bit later. But we work together all the time. And we have this relationship where he can feed me energy and I can feed him energy, and I think he really understands a lot of the music, so I don’t have to tell him.
It’s really nice to play these small shows before the record comes out and we have to play bigger venues. It was to exploit the moment, as well, and keep the momentum up. And keep us on our toes, because a lot of it is kind of improvised. When we started it, it was all just, this is the composition, and we can figure out what to do with it, how to expand it in places, and really listen to each other’s ups and each other’s downs. And I think sonically that happens and I think emotionally that happens, and so it’s really easy when we go to record because instantly it’s like there’s a vision there.
CG
And do you feel this connection musically when you’re playing bigger stages, or are the intimate ones more likely to get that feeling?
KK
It really is that the smaller stages are a lot more intense. The bigger stage is a bit more relaxed because I have more musicians. I have my other guitarist, Jack: he can play half the stuff, and I can just sit. I can enjoy it. I can do whatever I want or not even be there. Like I could send out another ginger guy instead ... and George is a different animal for those big gigs, because he’s almost like a frontman himself; he’s part of the theater of it. He gets his arms out and he looks.
CG
Yeah, but at la Marbrerie, he was quieter, like if he was playing for the family
KK
Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly it. So it’s a completely different thing, and with the smaller shows a lot more rides on my playing.
CG
I’ve seen you play a few times now, and I remember, especially in the first shows, you would get extremely close to the mic and create a lot of tension. In Paris last March, you would do this smoother thing where you’d start off really far away from the mic and then slowly get closer. Is this new way of using your voice something you’ve been working on for a long time?
KK
Yeah. We do that on big stages as well sometimes, but I just think it’s special if you’re playing a smaller show like that in Paris, or some of the ones we’ve played recently in Berlin, London, and Porto, and you can get the same message across without using the mic. Because there’s some songs where it needs to have this distance, and I know now I can trust my diaphragm enough to be able to project.
So sonically it sounds way different than when I come in with something more intimate and way softer; it really has an effect on what’s happening and what the audience are listening to. I can really exploit that in a smaller space and I think it’s important, because it takes away from the conventional setup where this is your microphone, this is your guitar, this is your sax. It’s more about the space that we’re all in together.
And now, people want things to be repeatable; they want to have things at their fingertips at all times. People are so frustrated with the idea that they can’t listen to something over and over and over again, or have it whenever they want it, and so something like this show in Paris, it’s like you can’t really ever have that again. It happened, and that’s it and that’s where it exists. People can record it, but it’s not the same. I quite like that idea of dropping something into the ocean of time and just saying, “That’s when it existed, and it will never really be the same.” Maybe other shows I won’t sing like that, you know?
CG
I know what you mean. You were also selling flexi discs during this concert, which is one of the most fragile formats for music. It plays on a turntable but gets damaged every time you play it until it becomes impossible to listen anymore.
KK
All of this is a massive response to consumerism, and it’s not really even about money anymore, people just want to take, take, take, and so they expect you to give, give, give. So I like the idea of not making it easy.
CG
The last track you played was really orchestral. It was beautiful—I never thought you’d be into that kind of stuff. And there is an atmospheric interlude track on your new album, sampling your baby’s voice.
KK
I always loved those in-between bits, the random shit; it creates such a curious atmosphere. And it creates a connection to the listener if they can notice something like that. You feel a bit more connected to it, because it’s natural.
CG
You’re giving away your personal life here. But this tension sounds very good.
KK
Well, I’m glad you like it. But, with the whole ten years thing and going back to that, when I was young, there was all this shit with the papers talking about “this generation” or whatever, or anger and pain and stuff like that; it started to feed itself, so then I started to create more of a character out of it.
CG
You can get trapped by the situation you created, and it can be as terrible as empowering.
KK
I think there is that whole conversation for a lot of creatives, where they happily feed their own destruction to create. And there’s an obsession with that from the audience, from everyday life. I know humans who love to witness stuff that ... Whether it’s in reality TV, whether it’s superficially done, or organically done, people love to see each other suffer in different ways.
CG
For instance, with Amy Winehouse, I’m still reflecting on whether people actually enjoyed her music, or if it was the whole process of her personal life getting into her public life that was so interesting to the people.
KK
Well, people definitely did. I loved her music. I loved her lyricism and her poetry, which spoke about a lot of scenarios that you could relate to, to darkness. Her talent was so raw; I know a lot of young people loved that about it. She was so successful—in that conventional idea of success. She was, for a year, just obscenely successful.
CG
How did you get out of that spiral yourself?
KK
Oh, you know, I don’t know that you can get out of it, but you can be aware of it, you can recognize it, yeah.
CG
You said in an interview recently that you will sell your soul to the devil now that you have a mouth to feed. Was that a joke?
KK
Always. I don’t know if it’s known in the public, but I know in the industry that it’s fairly known that I say no to a lot of stuff. I don’t take a lot of the opportunities that come my way. And it’s not out of ego; it’s out of preference. I see a lot of young artists—and so they should—take a lot of opportunities from more grotesque places. So maybe I’ll do that now.
CG
It’s time to star in a fashion campaign.
KK
Anything. I’ll do McDonald’s. Why not, man? The idea of selling out was something that was drilled into you as being really negative when you were younger; it was like, “Oh, fuck being a sellout.” But then, the people who said that, they’ve all kind of done it now.
CG
So you don’t have plans to sell your soul yet?
KK
Oh, if anyone wants to buy it, I’ll take the best offer, yeah. It depends on who comes knocking, you know.
CG
Where do you live now?
KK
Nowhere at the moment, but I’ve got a flat in London coming soon.
CG
But you grew up in London?
KK
Yeah. South London.
CG
Do you still like the city?
KK
I don’t like the country. I don’t agree with a lot of things happening in the country, but I am from a place and I prefer that place to some other places. But I love Liverpool; it’s nice. It’s really cool. For me, it was really important to move out of London and to see another place in England, because it was something I never experienced. But I’d like to live somewhere other than England, somewhere with all of my family. I wish every one of my friends could be somewhere else. I think we deserve a better scenario.
CG
Are you into musical collaboration?
KK
Only if I’m physically there with someone. Pretty V, with whom I released a three-track EP earlier this year, he’s a lot younger than me. I met him when some friends of mine got him to come down to London, and he was probably like 16 or something. I don’t know how old he is now, maybe like 20, 21, but he’s unique and he’s got a very, very big, big, big love for music and for performance, and that really was cool to see. He wants to not just make music, but transcend into something else, like theater. Or maybe it’s just being young, being obsessed with iconography and creating icons. He wants to become an icon ...
CG
Were you into that when you were younger?
KK
Elvis, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain—you know, these kinds of mysterious icons that you put on your wall and you think to yourself, “Oh, I wish I was them.” Maybe not all of it, but you know what I mean—I wish I made music like that. I don’t want the pain.
CG
Not the pain for sure, but the performative side. You had that in your soul from the beginning, don’t you think?
KK
I knew early on that whatever I did was working. I remember, because, before I was famous, when I was young, I was playing, and every time I played, I’d get a lot of response from people. I’d be like, “Wow, something happened here.” I felt really shy; I wasn’t confident, but I felt the beauty of my heart beating like that. I felt some of that energy. In France, one of my first gigs was at La Flèche d’Or, and there was no one there when I played; only about 12-15 people. I played and didn’t think anything of it, and then apparently some French newspaper wrote about it, and my uncle said it was a really good review. And I was like, “Whoa, that’s weird.” It’s weird when people start telling you something you don’t really know. But there’s been moments where I’ve really lost my energy, my emotion, when it’s been flat. I didn’t know why I was there; I didn’t know what people liked about me, but my ego was starting to get bigger, because people were telling me how good I was. So I hadn’t figured out what I was actually doing, and I didn’t see the importance in a lot of stuff that I see the importance in now. The Ooz took me ages to make, and that brought me out of that shit.
CG
Do you think the few experiences you mentioned earlier—your guitar being a sketchbook, your drawings, or walking alone in the city—were ways of escaping the negative things that were impacting your life?
KK
If anything, they’re equally part of any kind of chaos or destruction; they’re companions. I wouldn’t want to read any of the stuff I wrote in the notebooks back then, but when I did write them at the time, I knew that if I didn’t throw them in the trash or set fire to them, they would be appreciated at some point in time. Not by myself, maybe, but by someone else. But with these, I don’t know, I just have a pride ... I have pride in my sketchbook, and, with my guitar, I have a sketchbook.
CG
What do you think has truly changed for you in between the third and the fourth albums? How was the recording of Space Heavy?
KK
With the music and the composition, I just feel strongly that I’m more mature and more comfortable than I’ve ever been—with myself and my brain and what I can do. I feel like I’ve made big steps forward in the last few years. I’m not sure towards what exactly, but I’m appreciative. I’m lucky. I just get to create music. I would’ve never imagined I could have it that good, you know.
And recording the album ... I’d spent a lot of time on the recordings before, doing ten guitar tracks, ten synth tracks, and loads of different things. With Space Heavy, we were like, as soon as we get the take, we’re moving on. Really quick. Like, fuck it, it’s done.
CG
You can feel it when you listen to the record. There’s no hesitation.
KK
And it’s back to what I was saying about recognizing the privilege that I have, and the privilege that I have as a musician now. The privilege that I have is that, when I’m inspired, I can exploit it in that moment. When I was younger, I had that limitation of not being able to record properly. So I’d have to have ev- erything ready, go in, and go bang.
CG
Space Heavy gets us to accept its negativity to get the balance of its positivity. Did you already know during the recording sessions that your album was going to be this sad and joyful at the same time?
KK
I don’t really know. I guess when you’re in darkness, you kind of look for the light, and when you’re in the light, you are focused on the dark.
ALL CLOTHING: MARTINE ROSE
PHOTOGRAPHY: MARK KEAN
STYLING: STUART WILLIAMSON
CREATIVE DIRECTION: ALESSIO ASCARI
PHOTO ASSISTANT: WYNSTON SHANNON, ALEX DOW, ED PHILLIPS
STYLING ASSISTANT: LIZZIE ASH
HAIR: MATT MULHALL
MAKEUP: MARINA BELFON-ROSE USING LAURA MERCIER
PRODUCTION: ANNABEL FERNANDES